Remainers have been mocked by an Irish economist for showing “confirmation bias”, as Germany is hit by a recession.
Economist Philip Pilkington accused Remain voters, dubbed “Myopic Remoaners”, of choosing to believe that all of the UK’s economic woes are the result of the 2016 vote to leave the European Union.
But he claimed that Germany’s recession, which technically occurred before that of the UK, is evidence that Brexit is not entirely to blame.
The economist noted that “Germany remains in the European Union, yet it experienced a technical recession before Britain”.
Mr Pilkington also cautioned against blaming the problem of inflation on Brexit, saying: “Inflation across Europe has a number of underlying causes, including the interruption of supply chains caused by the lockdowns and the disruption of energy and fertiliser markets caused by the war in Ukraine.
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“Much has been made of increases in food prices in Britain – but if we look over the whole period of recent inflation, we see that while food prices rose 26.3pc in the UK between December 2019 and April 2023, they rose 30.6pc in Germany.”
Comparing Remainers to “conspiracy theorists”, Mr Pilkington said that Brexit was “one of the most dramatic instances of confirmation bias in living memory”.
Writing in the Telegraph, the economist explained confirmation bias as when human beings “cling on to a singular explanation – usually one that they find emotionally appealing – and use it to explain a range of unrelated phenomena.”
He claimed that the narrative that “Project Fear is becoming Brexit Reality” is becoming “harder and harder to maintain”.
Earlier this week, it emerged that Germany has fallen into a technical recession.
The economy contracted by 0.3 percent in the first three months of this year, following a 0.5 percent contraction in the final quarter of 2022.
A recession is defined as two consecutive quarters of declining output.
The UK is expected to avoid recession in 2023 and start to return to trend growth rates towards the end of next year.
Announcing the second quarter of negative growth in Germany, the Federal Office for Statistics said: “The persistence of high price increases continued to be a burden on the German economy at the start of the year.
“This was particularly reflected in household final consumption expenditure, which was down 1.2 percent in the first quarter of 2023.”
